Posted by herbmaster on Sep 1, 2010 in Uncategorized
Chanting is the spiritual practice of repeating a word, a sound, a phrase or an entire poem, song, or verse. Chanting is a practice that many of the worlds spiritual and religious traditions uphold.
A chanting practice can hold many purposes. The nature of the purpose tends to related to the particular tradition or practice itself.
A commonality amongst all the chanting traditions is that chanting facilitates the development of concentration.
Chanting a particular phrase, mantra or verse repeatedly helps you to develop your powers of concentration.
All of your attention is focused on the chanting of that mantra or word. Directed into that mantra is all your energy and your emotions. The sound you produce is the mantra or chant. If your mind naturally does wander as you start your chanting practice, it has to wander back in order to do the chanting itself.
All of this helps to develop concentration. In the yoga traditions they refer to this as “one pointed concentration”.
But what exactly is the purpose of developing concentration?
Having the ability to concentrate the mind provides numerous benefits. Obviously there are the benefits that help and can be applied in everyday life.
A capacity to stay focused. The ability to stay with the task at hand. The ability to develop your memory and not forget.
When you practice chanting this actually creates new neural connections in the brain. This is laying down new neural pathways of concentration.
In modern times there is the rise of ADD and all attention related disorders. Unfortunately the human mind is becoming something of a mess. The capacity to focus, concentrate, remember and actually retain information is become a lost art in todays age.
This situation is not assisted with the information overload that we consume as our diet and the various media we choose to surround ourselves with such as the TV, DVDs, film, mobiles etc etc.
A chanting practice helps the brain to regain and develop concentration. Once this concentration is developed, it is naturally and can be consciously integrated into your life to assist you in performing all the tasks you need to do that require focus and concentration. If you feel you could do with help of a little concentration, develop your mind and powers of concentration with a chanting practice.
Tags: chanting
Posted by herbmaster on Sep 1, 2010 in Uncategorized
Mantra meditation comes in a variety of shapes and forms. Meaning, there are many different types of mantra meditation.
In mantra meditation what is chanted is a particular mantra, word, sound, verse or song, repeatedly. The repetition can be silent and said inwardly, or whispered, spoken, chanted or sung.
It is this sound and the repetition of this sound that is your point of focus in your mantra meditation practice. Hence the term mantra meditation.
One particular form of mantra meditation is that of working with the chakras. With the principles of vibration resonance, particular mantras can be used to work on the chakras.
The energetic centres of the body situated along the spin are referred to as chakras.
When working on the chakras with sound, there is a particular series of mantras that can be used. These mantras are referred to as the bija mantras. The bija mantras are mono syllabic sounds.
It is from the Indian traditions such as the Vedic and Tantric traditions that the bija mantras originate. These power and potentially of these bija mantras is said to be enormous.
Each area of the body corresponds to a particular bija mantra. Here you use the bija mantra that corresponds to the particular chakra that you would like to work on.
There are a number of ways you can choose to work with the bija mantras. If you feel you need to work on a particular chakra you can choose the corresponding mantra to work on that chakra.
Or perhaps you feel you need to work on more than one chakra. So here you would work again with the corresponding mantras for the corresponding chakras that you are wishing to work on.
Or you may wish to work on the entire chakra system. WIth this method of working you would work from bottom to top or top to bottom with the chakras and corresponding bija mantras as your mantra meditation practice.
Working the entire chakra system in this way gives your system a full work out and rebalancing in your mantra meditation practice.
In your mantra meditation practice, there are a number of ways to work with the chakra system. Find what is right for you.
Tags: mantra meditation
